365 Days of Aaron: Week 8 (Days 49-55)

July 8, 2010	July 9, 2010
July 10, 2010	July 11, 2010
July 12, 2010	July 13, 2010
July 14, 2010	Week 8 Bonus Pic

CTE: Aaron receives jabs from Sister Penny

Aaron at 4 months

    Seems like a strange title for a blog post, but it briefly illustrates the strange language they speak over here in South Africa.  Aaron went for his 4 mo. vaccinations on Thursday, even though he is 6 days away from being 5 months old.  (We're a little slow)  Anyway, we went to the paediatrician's (actual spelling) office and met with Sister Penny (recommended by a friend).  And, of course, my first reaction was: Why are we meeting a nun at the doctor's office?  But, I did not ask that right away.  She took us into her office and wanted to see Aaron's records and started talking about the differences between the US and SA vaccination schedules, seeming very professional.  At the appropriate time, I had to ask what the title Sister meant.  Penny just looked at me a little bewildered, so I asked what she would be called in America.  Her response was that sister is a British term for nurse, stemming from their history where a large number of nurse were actually nuns.

    After that was cleared up it was time for the jabs, which is another word for shots.  They still use terms like vaccinations or immunizations here in SA, but the colloquial term is jabs instead of shots.  Not sure which sounds worse.  Anyway, Aaron did great, took his jabs like a champ, with some minimal crying and was ready to go again.
    The last order of business was Aaron's measurements.  Sister Penny weighed and measured Aaron.  His official 4 mo. plus 24 day measurements were: 7.28 kg and 65 cm.  Pretty amazing, huh!  For those of you who are not a metric-savvy as Diana and I (which means we have a handy iPod conversion tool), the American measurements are: 17 lbs, 4 oz. and 25 5/8 inches.  Unfortunately, they do not do percentage sizes here, but to put that into perspective, Aaron has grown about 3 inches and more than 3 lbs in the last 2 months.  Good work, son!

CTE: The Braai #2

Mike, Jane, Paul, Lee, Aaron & Diana

    As a follow-up to the Braai post from last week, we were able to have another Braai at our house on a beautiful Friday evening (see picture).  Some of our friends from Common Grounds Church (Paul & Lee and Mike & Jane) came over for the braai.  Mike brought his Weber (pronounced Wee-bur) over and was dubbed the Tong-Master (see video below).  We were exposed to one additional type of meat, the SA version of Bratwurst, the Boerewors.  As far as I can tell, there is no standard to the Boerewors, as there are an infinite number of varieties in the grocery stores.  They are typically beef and very long (one continuous sausage) and very tasty, with an assortment of spices, like coriander (very popular in SA), black pepper, garlic, nutmeg, etc...).  They are great on a hotdog bun with tomato sauce (like ketchup) or just plain with salad.  An excellent substitute for the Wisconsin Brat (although I miss them).  Still hoping that we can find some here.
    Lastly, I wanted to add this Youtube video that we watched that night about South African Braai Ettitque.  Enjoy, very funny!

CTE: The Braai

  For my first post about the Cape Town Experience, I wanted to go right to the heart of South African culture, the Braai.  Okay, maybe it does not represent all of South African (or SA, for short) culture, but it certainly seems to be an important aspect.  So, you ask, what is a Braai?  Well, in a nutshell, it is barbecue.  Braai is the Afrikaans word for barbecue.  If you want the Wikipedia definition, click here.  I had been hearing about Braai-ing (actual usage by real South Africans) since we landed in Cape Town and we were keen (great SA word!) to participate in one.  The opportunity presented itself two weekends ago.  September 24th is a national holiday entitled Heritage Day, a celebration of South African culture.  It has also become National Braai Day.  Since Sept 24th fell on a Friday, we had a three-day weekend with lots of time to Braai.
  So, Sunday afternoon, we were invited over to Andy's (fellow UCT professor) house for our first official SA Braai.  (He is the one brandishing the tongs in the picture.)  By observing Andy and querying him on the Braai, I was able to gather enough information to determine what distinguishes a Braai from and American barbecue.

  So, the basic premise is the same.  Men gather to cook meat over an open flame.  Women stay inside and prepare the salad, drinks, etc...  A Braai generally consists of cooking over a wood fire, that is very important and there was a brief ridicule of the Americans and their gas grills.  It is also important which type of wood is used.  That being said, Andy started his fire with wood, but then supplemented it with charcoal, so charcoal is okay if needed.  The other big difference is the type of meat.  At Andy's house, we had sirloin steak, kudu, and lamb chops (all pictured on left).  Kudu is a form of antelope, perfectly legal to eat, quite tasty and expensive.  Andy prepared it for us as a special occasion, our first SA Braai.  Overall, our first SA Braai was a tremendous success with hopefully many more to come.

The Cape Town Experience (CTE)

We have now officially been in Cape Town 5 weeks, at least as of 10 pm tonight.  It is hard to believe that it has been that long.  Of course, in some ways, it feels like we have been here forever as well.

We hit a major milestone yesterday.  Our DSL service at home is finally fully functional!  YAAY!!! Now, I was not using this as an excuse, but it did make it harder to keep everyone up-to-date without the internet.  (Maybe I am too dependent on technology.)  Anyway, I no longer have any excuses to update our blog.  My new plan (if you haven't noticed I like to make plans :) is to give you all brief glimpses into our life in Cape Town, South Africa through short little stories or experiences.  I am calling it the Cape Town Experience Blog Series!  I know,  it is a long name, so for short it will be CTE.  I hope that you enjoy them and I hope that I can keep the momentum going.  Cheers, Steve

Our Cape Town Cottage

Here are some pictures of our cottage in Cape Town.  Address: 5 Stanley Road, Rondebosch, Cape Town 7700 SOUTH AFRICA.  Check it out on Google Maps.  Notice the UCT campus on the left-hand side of the map.

Here is our living room on our first morning in South Africa.  Still in our PJs at noon.  The furnishing are nice, if not a bit out-of-date, and poorly arranged, prompting Diana to rearrange the entire place.

A picture of the front door.  Gotta love the giant lion's head on the door!

Here is our entry way with the 4 gates to get in.  Not shown is the gate between the carport and the road.

Here is a picture up Stanley Road towards the university with Devil's Peak in the background.  Pretty amazing sight every morning.  Also a vigorous walk up the hill.  Building up those calf muscles :)

Here are some guinea-hens or pea-hens that roam the neighborhood.  Here they are in the park-area across the street from our cottage.

Here is a picture of Aaron hanging out on the living room floor.  Notice the space heater behind him.  The cottage has no central heat (or central air) and gets pretty cold at night, necessitating the heaters.

The Trip to Cape Town

We have arrived in Cape Town!  Here are some pictures from the 3-day trip.  Check out more pics on Facebook.

Our flight from Houston to Amsterdam went well.  Here we are ready to go!  There are a few perks to having a baby, like early boarding!

Aaron also got his own little bassinet to sleep in.  He wasn't crazy about it, mainly because he was almost too big for it, but did get quite a bit of sleep, unlike Mom and Dad who struggled to get comfortable.

We arrived in Amsterdam at 9 am local time (2 am Houston time) and were a bit groggy, but made it through customs fine (Aaron got his first passport stamp) and had to go to Odd-size baggage to pick up our stroller.  Diana particularly liked how the Dutch say Odd-size baggage :)  Good luck with the pronunciation.

We were able to stay with our friends the Parkers (missionaries in Amsterdam).  Here is Ashlie with Annabelle and Elijah at their front door.  They have a great three-story apartment west of downtown Amsterdam.  Check out their blog at: theparkersadventures.blogspot.com

Being good Dutch, we went for a bike ride.  They have these amazing bike with boxes on them (you can't really see the bike in this picture).  But it was great for Aaron who was strapped into a little seat and covered from the wind.  According to Chad, there are more bikes than people in the Netherlands.  The Parkers represented by having 8 bikes between the 5 of them!

I had the honor of driving Annabelle around with her doll, which she never dropped.

Chad had the other two kids, Elijah on front and Whit on the back.  Diana had it easy and was riding a bike by herself.  Of course, she did ride the box bike back from dinner, which looked like a lot of work.

We eventually got to our destination (after a few wrong turns), which was a Mexican restaurant.  The food was actually pretty good (for Dutch Mexican burritos).  No pictures of the food, but here is Annabelle and Whit loving on Aaron at the restaurant.

After a good night sleep in Amsterdam, we were back to the airport and back on the plane.  As you can see, Aaron is ready to go!  After breezing through luggage check-in in Houston, we were a bit worried about having to recheck our luggage in Amsterdam.  The lady at the counter was very nice, but strictly adhered to the 23 kg limit, forcing us to shift a few things into our carry-ons, but the real problem arose when she told we were not allowed to bring a stroller, a pack-n-play and a car-seat for Aaron.  After 30 minutes of discussion in Dutch with all of the nearby check-in attendants, the rules magically changed and everything was okay.

The 11.5 hour flight to Cape Town was long, but manageable.  Our plan was to stay awake the whole flight because it was daylight the whole way.  We left at 10:30 am and landed at 10 pm in the same time zone.  It gave us a chance to get caught up on the latest movies we had missed like Nanny McPhee 2, Ironman 2 and How to Train a Dragon.  All good movies.  Aaron, of course, slept and was the center of attention.  Once we landed and cleared customs, UCT spent a driver to pick us up.  Of course, had it get a picture of that.